Republican Intelligence Committee Report Blows Up The Benghazi Hoax [Updated]

Posted by Mark NC on November 21, 2014 at 5:39 pm. 7 Comments :

The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee responsible for investigating Benghazi released its final report in a pre-Thanksgiving Friday news dump. Their conclusions debunked nearly every right-wing, Fox News, conservative fruitcake, conspiracy theory that has been circling the wingnut drain for the past two years.

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The Associated Press is reporting that the Committee’s findings absolve the administration of any wrongdoing. That includes the grossly unfair attacks on then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the allegations that military rescue units were told to “stand down,” and numerous assaults on Hillary Clinton’s character and management of the State Department. The House Committee report’s conclusions affirm those of the Senate Intelligence Committee who issued their own report on Benghazi nearly a year ago. The AP said in part…

“In the aftermath of the attacks, Republicans criticized the Obama administration and its then-secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016. People in and out of government have alleged that a CIA response team was ordered to ‘stand down’ after the State Department compound came under attack, that a military rescue was nixed, that officials intentionally downplayed the role of al-Qaida figures in the attack, and that Stevens and the CIA were involved in a secret operation to spirit weapons out of Libya and into the hands of Syrian rebels. None of that is true, according to the House Intelligence Committee report.”

Some of the flaws in the follow-up to the attack were identified by the committee as being the result of mistakes by “intelligence analysts, not political appointees.” This absolves both the Obama administration and Clinton, who Republicans were hoping to smear with false allegations connected to the Benghazi affair.

One area that received criticism in the report regarded whether adequate security was in place at the time of the attack. The report concluded that the facility was not well protected. However, it did not go into the fact that it was a diplomatic outpost, not a military base. Generally diplomatic facilities are designed to be open to the public and welcoming of local residents. A militaristic presence would defeat the purpose of the diplomatic mission. Consequently, the fine line between security and accessibility is often difficult to define.

The question now is whether the new House Select Committee on the Politicization of Benghazi that GOP Speaker John Boehner impaneled will continue its work. In order to do so they would have to presume that their colleagues on the Intelligence Committee screwed up. That would make for an interesting fight between fellow GOP chairmen Mike Rogers and Trey Gowdy. However, the new Committee, that was formed last May, hasn’t done much work and has held only one meeting in the six months since its creation. If it were to dissolve tomorrow it’s probable that nobody would notice. So while failing to uncover anything untoward, the GOP has spent millions of dollars struggling to create a controversy, but succeeded only in proving that they are utterly inept.

It will also be interesting to see if Fox News even bothers to report the conclusions of the Intelligence Committee. Fox has spent innumerable hours flailing Obama, Clinton, Rice, and anyone else they thought they could impugn with slanderous allegations for two years now. They have attacked people as liars, incompetents, even traitors, and called for the impeachment of President Obama. Never mind that they never had any evidence of any wrongdoing.

And now their own GOP inquisitors have given the administration a complete vindication. Will Fox News do a special hour report on “Benghazi: The Exoneration of the White House?” Not that that would compensate for the Benghazi fixation that has consumed Fox for so long. In addition to their relentless blanketing of the airwaves with Benghazi porn as a matter of routine, they have produced several special reports on the subject with hyperbolic titles such as…

Fox News Reporting: 13 Hours at Benghazi.
Fox News Reporting: Benghazi: White House Cover-Up Revealed?
Special Report Investigates: Death and Deceit in Benghazi.
Fox News Reporting: Benghazi: The Truth Behind the Smokescreen.
Special Report Investigates: Benghazi – New Revelations.

And nothing has come of any of it. When does Fox News broadcast a retraction and an apology to those whose reputations they have tarnished? When do they admit that it was all a partisan scheme to demean Democrats and help Republicans? When do they begin to honor their slogan “fair and balanced” by giving their viewers a more complete picture of reality?

Don’t waste too much time pondering the answers to those questions. Fox will never exhibit the integrity required to be legitimate journalists. They were conceived as a right-wing propaganda operation and they will remain faithful to that nefarious mission. Even as facts emerge, like those from the House Intelligence Committee, that prove they are flagrantly partisan and dishonest.

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[Update:] Fox News posted an account of the House Intelligence Committees’s report on their website that was predictably biased. It failed to report any of the exonerating conclusions made by the GOP-led panel. Instead, it appeared under a misleading headline that read “CIA gathered intelligence on weapons to Syria: Benghazi report,” and focused on ancillary issues that were either not in contention or were the flawed product of intelligence analysts.

[Update: 11/22] Fox News finally mentioned the House Intel report on the air in a segment that lasted only 36 seconds and, true to form, they completely ignored the salient facts that exonerated the administration.

[Update: 11/23] On Fox’s MediaBuzz, host Howard Kurtz raised the question of whether the committee report received the amount of coverage that it warranted. He concluded that it did not.

“The House Intelligence Committee issued the results of a two year investigation of Benghazi and, among other things, the committee controlled by Republicans says that their was no intelligence failure. There was no stand-down order. There was no cover up by administration officials, or at least no intention to deceive. […] Given all the attention that Benghazi has gotten, including on this network, should that have gotten more coverage?

Also on the program was disgraced former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson who disagreed for some absurdly petty reasons.

“There were no answers, I think, to the great imponderables, which may be why it didn’t get more coverage. Like what was the President doing that night? Why can’t we see the White House photos. What happened to the surveillance video in Benghazi.”

First of all, all of those “imponderables” were previously pondered and answered. But more to the point, it is ridiculous to suggest that seeing photos from the White House, thousands of miles away from the scene, is more important than than correcting allegations of a cover up or debunking scurrilous conspiracy theories claiming that Americans were deliberately left behind to die. Attkisson, who wants to taken seriously as a journalist, is embarrassing herself again with a fixation on tabloid irrelevancies.

Benghazi A Mini Iran/Contra? Fox News Should Ask Their Own In-House Felon

Posted by Mark NC on September 17, 2014 at 4:33 pm. 3 Comments :

Earlier this week Fox News helped to promote a shoddily constructed story by a discredited reporter about an alleged effort by the State Department to dispose of documents that might be harmful to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The story, that they laughably called a “bombshell,” did not provide a single bit of evidence and relied entirely on allegations by a former State Department official who had been reprimanded for being “grossly inadequate” and who clearly had an ax to grind.

Today Fox News upped the ante by adding new scenarios with even less connection to reality. On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade introduced a segment with retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer saying that…

“Anything that could have got them into trouble, Colonel, was grinded up, was shredded, and the review board never got all the documents.”

Of course, none of that was ever verified, and the allegations were merely speculation by someone who the reporter admits never witnessed any such thing. So in order to take the focus off of how thin this whole fictional account is, Kilmeade allowed his guest to offer up a complete fantasy that neither of them bothered to support with any facts.

Shaffer: Some of these documents we’re talking about were probably the direct link to some of the bad incidents, to include the holy grail here that nobody wants to talk about, is the obtaining of weapons from the Libyan rebels, moving them out of the country, to the Turks, through Turkey to the Syrian rebels. Some of those rebels ended up being the ISIS threat we’re now facing.

Kilmeade: So you mean this is almost like a mini Iran/Contra thing?

Shaffer responded “Absolutely,” to this question, apparently ignorant of what the Iran/Contra scandal was all about. Shaffer’s invention of a plot to transfer weapons that were lawfully provided to Qaddafi foes in Libya, to dubious characters in Syria, is nothing like Iran/Contra, and there is no evidence that it even happened. In the Reagan era scandal weapons were illegally sold to Iran while the nation was under an international arms embargo. The proceeds were then used to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras, which was explicitly prohibited by federal law.

The funny thing about this is that Fox News could have gotten all of this straight if they had instead interviewed their own employee, Oliver North. It was North who ran the Iran/Contra affair and was convicted by a jury for his felonious behavior. However, he is now a Fox News anchor and military commentator for the network. You have to wonder whether it was his violations of federal and international arms trading laws, or his perjury conviction for lying under oath to Congress, that made him such an attractive candidate for employment at Fox.

Actually, it may be overly optimistic to suggest that North would have straightened anybody out, since he has been lying about the scandal for more than two decades. But it’s interesting that Fox is now using Iran/Contra as an example of grossly unlawful practices with their comparison to the fiction they are hyping about the Clinton State Department purging documents. If this “holy grail” that they are now trying to smear Clinton with is so bad that they are calling it a “mini Iran/Contra,” then how can they ethically employ the leader of the actual, full-sized Iran/Contra?

Of course, the answer to that question is that Fox News has never considered it within their charter to act ethically. That makes their job of lying and distorting the news a lot easier.

Benghazi “Bombshell” Dropped Just In Time For The New Committee’s Maiden Hearing

Posted by Mark NC on September 15, 2014 at 3:55 pm. 6 Comments :

The theatrics that go into the Fox News production of right-wing scandal mongering rival the most ambitious Broadway presentations. There is drama and conflict and complex stage management that grabs the audience and drags them through a narrative that is lurid and mysterious.

That applies nowhere more fully than to their long-running Benghazi blockbuster. It is what they turn to whenever they need a quick jolt of fabricated controversy. And with the first public hearing of Trey Gowdy’s brand spanking-new “Committee to Politicize Benghazi” scheduled for this week, Fox News has aired a promotional extra to accompany the premiere. Anchor Eric Shawn introduced the segment and correspondent Doug McKelway saying…

“We have a Fox News Alert, a ‘bombshell’ as they say, in the Benghazi terror attacks investigation. Turns out a former State Department employee speaking out in a new report now claims that aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they claim, took part in after-hours sessions to quote ‘separate’ damaging documents before those allegedly damaging documents were handed over to investigators.”

Golly willikers, this can’t be good news for Miss Hillary. Even though Fox has, in conjunction with Darrell Issa’s Committee on Overstepping, declared numerous other disclosures to be bombshells that turned out to be nothing but duds, this one is fer-sure a bona fide bombshell. That’s because it was discovered by Sharyl Attkisson, the disgraced former CBS reporter who was fired as a result of her shoddy and biased reporting including about Benghazi. Attkisson’s new story was published by The Daily Signal, an arm of the uber-rightist Heritage Foundation. It contains zero evidence of the alleged activities and relies on a single, and decidedly partial, source. No wonder she was fired by CBS, but found work at the Heritage rag. Attkisson writes that…

“As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

There were a couple of notable omissions by Fox News that even Attkisson’s blatantly biased article included. First of all, Alec Gerlach, a State Department spokesman, said that “The range of sources that the ARB’s investigation drew on would have made it impossible for anyone outside of the ARB to control its access to information.” In other words, no documents could have been separated out and withheld because they would have been available elsewhere. Secondly, Attkisson’s sole source, Raymond Maxwell, was not someone who could be plausibly described as neutral. He was a deputy assistant secretary who had responsibility for North Africa. The New York Times reported in December of 2012 that he was one of…

“…four State Department officials [who] were removed from their posts on Wednesday after an independent panel criticized the ‘grossly inadequate’ security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that was attacked on Sept. 11, leading to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.”

Maxwell was a disgruntled employee who had filed grievances with the State Department’s Human Resources Bureau and the American Foreign Service Association. Whether or not his allegations are true, he cannot be regarded as impartial due to his obvious personnel entanglement. However, the ARB’s investigation does contain a certain measure of credibility because it was headed by Thomas Pickering, a veteran diplomat who served in the Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations, and Admiral Michael Mullen (Ret), a Navy vet who was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by George W. Bush. These are not Clinton partisans hired to whitewash her record as Secretary of State.

The emergence of this phony bombshell on the eve of the Benghazi committee’s debut is an extraordinary coincidence. And its presentation on Fox News that left out critical details is likewise a convenient happenstance. If nothing else it allowed anchor Shawn to conclude with a smarmy “Some wonder if this could be a smoking gun of a potential cover-up.” So the bombshell is also a smoking gun, and it’s all part of a cover-up. At least to a mysterious “some” who are wondering. This masterpiece of fiction has blockbuster written all over it.

DISGUSTING: The Fox News Response To Obama’s Statement On Foley Murder By ISIS

Posted by Mark NC on August 20, 2014 at 12:02 pm. 9 Comments :

President Obama gave a statement (video below) this afternoon on the barbaric murder of journalist Jim Foley who had been held in captivity by ISIS for two years. The statement was powerful and resolute, condemning ISIS as terrorists who brutalize Muslims, Christians, and other innocents in pursuit of an extremist agenda. Obama said in part…

“Today, the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of Jim Foley by the terrorist group, ISIL. […]

“Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages, killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can, for no other reason than they practice a different religion. […]

“We will be vigilant and we will be relentless. When people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.”

Within seconds of the completion of the statement, Fox News broadcast responses from a couple of their regular contributors, Andrea Tantaros and Pete Hegseth. Their remarks were utterly repulsive, dismissive, and disrespectful to the President, the memory of Mr. Foley, his family, and the nation.

Tantaros, reaching back to a favorite of Fox’s well worn anti-Obama themes, said “Where is that Rose Garden press conference for Benghazi?” (See update below) This remark is an affront to Foley whose sad fate had nothing to do with Benghazi. It was just an attempt by Tantaros to brazenly exploit Foley’s tragedy in pursuit of her own noxious political goals. But it was also something that Fox News does routinely. They have tied everything from ObamaCare to missing Malaysian planes to Benghazi. They will bring up Benghazi in any circumstance no matter how absurdly unrelated. And in this case they overstepped the bounds of decency by taking advantage of a gruesome murder before even one day had passed. On top that, Tantaros was wrong on the substance of her vile remark because Obama actually did give a statement about Benghazi in the Rose Garden the day following the attack.

Hegseth is supposedly a veteran’s advocate who appears on Fox News to bash the Commander-in-Chief. He is the head of Concerned Veterans for America, a phony front group that is almost entirely bankrolled by the Koch brothers. His remark following Obama’s statement was “I wish he’d put on a tie.” Really? That was what he came away with after the President denounced a horrific act of terrorism against an American citizen? Hegseth is apparently more concerned about the President’s attire than the fate of American victims or the state of our nation’s campaign against terrorism. He is so obsessed with finding fault with Obama that he ignored the tribute to Foley and the passionate promise to exact justice, in favor of acting as the spokesman for the Fox News Fashion Police.

As noted above, these were not opinions developed after thoughtful consideration. They came in mere seconds after Obama stepped away from the podium. That is how close to the top of their minds these sort of depraved ideas linger. These are the kind of commentaries that you can expect from a network whose mission to disparage the President, Democrats, and liberals, takes precedence over honest reporting or even common decency.

For more examples of Fox News’ commitment to indecency…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

[Update:] Another listening to Tantaros’ remark shows that she said “Where is that Rose Garden press conference after–Benghazi fight and fervor?” She said “after,” not “for.” So apparently she was aware of Obama’s post-Benghazi Rose Garden speech. However, everything noted above still stands with regard to her exploiting the Foley tragedy with an interjection of Benghazi, which had no bearing on it. In fact, this makes it even worse because she is now saying that she wishes that Obama’s response to Foley was more forceful, like after Benghazi. Huh? After Benghazi she, every other GOP/conservative, was adamant that Obama’s response was inadequate. Now, all of sudden, she’s praising Obama’s Benghazi response? There is more than a touch if schizophrenia in this.

How Inept Is This Republican Congress? More Inept Than You Ever Imagined

Posted by Mark NC on August 2, 2014 at 2:10 pm. 5 Comments :

If it seems to you that that President Obama has been under an investigative microscope since the moment he took office, it’s only because that’s pretty much true. Republicans were determined to foil anything positive that this president placed on his agenda, and their primary method of achieving that end has been perpetual investigations of trumped up scandals.

But even with their single-minded devotion to destroying this presidency, the House GOP has not produce any evidence of wrongdoing that implicated the White House. Of course, if their purpose was merely to keep the nation from enjoying the benefits of a productive government, Republicans can claim some success. They have certainly obstructed the creation of millions of jobs; progress on environmental protection; reforms of health care and immigration and tax policies; and numerous other initiatives that might have advanced the country’s well being. But any actual manifestations of scandal have been nonexistent.

To illustrate the level of incompetence attributable to these Tea Party hacks, it is useful to put their job performance into historical perspective. One way to do this is to compare their progress with that of prior congressional sessions working on similarly lofty projects. And since there has been so much talk of impeachment of late, it seemed like that would make a good model for comparison.

So get this: From the date that the U.S. Senate voted to establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, until the resignation of President Nixon, it took about 15 months. To reiterate, that’s from the date that the committee was approved, through the maze of contested hearings, the presentation of evidence, the White House defense, and all the way through the conclusion with a disgraced (and obviously guilty) president stepping down, only a little more than a year transpired.

Compare that to the current House Committee on Oversight’s investigation of whether the IRS discriminated against conservative organizations. Those hearings began 16 months ago. So they have already exceeded the time allotted to impeaching Nixon. However, there has not been a single shred of incriminating evidence uncovered. Plus, if you count from the time the Ways and Means Committee began their inquiries, it has been over 38 months. And these hearings are still continuing.

Let’s also compare the House hearings on Fast and Furious, the botched gun trafficking sting that actually began in the Bush Administration. But limiting this to just the Obama era, Congress has been investigating this since June 2011 – 38 months and counting. And nothing of substance has come from it.

The granddaddy of the Obama era pseudo-scandals has to be Benghazi. Over at Fox News they are suffering from a rare form of Benghazi Tourettes, spitting out the word every few seconds for no apparent reason other than to stir up their dimwitted viewers. So far, the congressional investigations into this have been ongoing for 23 months, with nothing to show for it. And on this issue they have been the most insistent that there is a correlation to Watergate. In fact, the Watergate angle has been an obsession that they tie to their wet dreams of impeachment.

Even the impeach-happy congress of the Clinton era took far less time to conduct hearings and actually try the President for high crimes and misdemeanors, than it has taken for any of the current Congress to even find a crumb of presidential misbehavior. From the inception of the House proceedings to impeach Clinton, until his acquittal in the Senate, it took all of four and a half months. If you count from the date that the Drudge Report posted its tabloid article identifying the Monica Lewinsky affair, it was still only 13 months.

Shameless self-promotion…
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To sum up, every one of the current phony scandals, that are wastefully consuming time and taxpayer dollars, are exceeding that spent on the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. And none of these scandals have produced any hint of wrongdoing. That’s fairly conclusive proof that the Republicans serving in Congress now are profoundly incompetent. There are really only three possible explanations for this. Either 1) There is no evidence and they are wasting everyone’s time, or 2) There is evidence, but these blockheads are too stupid to stumble over it, or 3) They don’t give a damn about evidence, they are only trying to smear the President.

Either way, they need to be relieved of their duties at the earliest opportunity, which would be this November. That makes it the responsibility of American voters to step up and do their duty. All you have to do is vote. And rest assured, if you do not, this GOP idiocy will continue for the next two years and will likely be escalated into a full-blown impeachment of Obama. For God’s sake, don’t let that happen.

Congress Allocates More Money To Phony Benghazi Investigations Than To Veterans

Posted by Mark NC on July 8, 2014 at 10:34 am. 2 Comments :

Two months ago GOP House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would concede to pressure from Fox News and the Tea Party by creating the House Select Committee On Politicizing Benghazi. He then packed the committee on the Republican side with rabidly partisan attack dogs, led by alpha dog Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Since that announcement there has been nothing of note to report. There are no scheduled hearings and no estimated timeline for the investigation. Count on it to drag out long enough for Republicans to exploit it during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The one bit of news that has just emerged is that the Speakers office has allocated $3.3 million to the committee for the current year. So after spending untold millions by four other partisan committees who, despite making wild predictions about White House malfeasance and cover ups, never found anything to support their manufactured accusations, they are now proposing to up the ante with no indication that the result will be any different.

To put the budgeting in perspective, the House Veterans Affairs Committee will only be receiving $3 million this year, even though they have more than twice as many members and a legitimate scandal to investigate with legitimate victims who continue to suffer. The Benghazi Circus will spend more in its first year than the Intelligence Committee which deals with numerous international matters that have far-reaching impact on national security.

The financial priority that is demonstrated by these budget choices is evidence that the Republican House is more obsessed with phony scandals and political sabotage than with actually solving real problems for the American people. The tragic events in Benghazi have always been merely a crude weapon for the rightist politicians and pundits who are fixated on destroying all things Obama. And the new committee is just another means of achieving political goals that they couldn’t achieve at the ballot box. This was illustrated with certainty when back in May of 2013, Fox News aired a tribute to their chief, CEO Roger Ailes, for his efforts as “The Driving Force” in “Keeping Benghazi Alive.”

This was one of the most brazen admissions of the abandonment of journalistic ethics ever broadcast. The arrogance they display with on-air graphics confessing that they “made terror attack a story” in response to a “push” by their CEO, is unprecedented. Credible news organizations do not permit executives to interfere with editorial decisions. But the operative word there is “credible,” which has never applied to Fox News.

Fox News Falsely Reports That Court Docs “Shatter” Benghazi Video Narrative

Posted by Mark NC on July 4, 2014 at 6:33 pm. 3 Comments :

The attempt by Fox News to manufacture a phony version of events leading up to the terrorist attack in Benghazi continues at full speed. The latest chapter in their fictional tale revolves around court documents released by the Department of Justice in a pretrial motion to secure the detention of suspect Ahmed Abu Khatalla. The report by Fox News begins with the allegation that…

“Court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department in the criminal case against Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah provide unprecedented details about the evolution of the assault and further shatter the Obama administration’s initial claim that it sprouted from protests over an anti-Islam film.”

The problem with Fox’s reporting is that nothing in the rest of their story supports the charge in their opening paragraph. Not only is there nothing that shatters the claim that an anti-Islam video played a part in the violence that night, there isn’t any reference to the video at all. There is no assertion that the video was a trigger for the attack, and no assertion that it was free of some responsibility for motivating the attackers.

A possible reason for there being nothing conclusive regarding the video is that the court documents referenced by Fox were merely a motion presenting the state’s arguments for maintaining Khatalla in custody while awaiting trial. The purpose of this motion is solely to establish that the defendant is a flight risk and a potential danger to the community. It does not pretend to include every bit of evidence or testimony that will be presented in court.

Nevertheless, Fox sought to portray the motion as containing material that it simply does not contain. That’s why the article never bothers to quote anything from the motion that supports the contention that the video narrative was put to rest. The best they could do was to say that…

“The motion says that in the days preceding the attack, the defendant ‘voiced concern and opposition to the presence of an American facility in Benghazi.'” [and that] “The motion filed this week said Khatallah ‘was motivated by his extremist ideology.'”

There’s no surprise there. The defendant, after all, was a leader of the anti-Western extremist group, Ansar al-Sharia. Of course he was opposed to the American presence on Benghazi. That, however, doesn’t negate the possibility that Khatalla’s plans to attack the diplomatic facility may have been inspired by, or opportunistically coordinated to, the numerous protests that were occurring simultaneously throughout much of the Middle East that were directly the result of the anti-Islam video.

What Fox fails to mention in their story is that Khatalla himself is reported to have admitted that the Benghazi attack was revenge for the video. According to the New York Times…

“What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.”

Fox’s reporting on this is all over the map. Aside from their obsessive fixation on the issue as a cudgel with which to pummel President Obama, Fox has previously labeled Khatalla the ringleader of the Benghazi attack, only to demote him to an irrelevant foot soldier after his capture.

What this tells us is that the value of any element of this story to Fox News is determined solely by its ability to reflect negatively on the President. Consequently, anyone who buys into anything that Fox says is being deliberately and willingly deluded.

UH-OH: Bush Released The Real Terrorist Mastermind Of The Benghazi Attack

Posted by Mark NC on June 28, 2014 at 12:04 pm. 1 Comments :

Last week Fox News and their Republican cohorts went berserk over reports that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS in Iraq, was a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay but was released by Obama. That happens to be another Fox manufactured lie, but that didn’t stop them from promulgating it repeatedly.

This week Fox News broadcast a report that has a similar revelation buried deep in a story notable for an unrelated, but equally disturbing. bit of disinformation. The article was about the captured Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala, who has generally been regarded as a leader of the terrorist militias in Libya. At least until he was was apprehended by U.S. military forces under Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Abu Obama Bin Kenya (as he is known to Fox News and their viewers). Suddenly, Khattala has been transformed from a ringleader to a bit player and, according to Fox’s anonymous sources, “low hanging fruit.” The exchange on Fox between anchor Martha MacCallum and reporter Adam Housley went like this:

MacCallum: Is he really believed to be the mastermind behind this night?

Housley: Well, it depends on who you talk to, Martha. When you talk to the administration they’ve touted this as being a big get for them, a big win for them as well. When we talk to those having direct knowledge of this from the very early days, they’ll tell you that Khattala really wasn’t that big of a deal at all.

There you have it. A “big get” according to the administration, but according to “those having direct knowledge,” as opposed to the administration, it’s no big whoop. Despite repeatedly referring to “them,” Housley never identifies a single one of his numerous alleged sources.

What’s more, the contention that Khattala was a mere pawn is one that has only emerged after his capture, presumably as an effort by Fox to avoid ever giving credit to Obama for anything that might be perceived as positive. However, before Khattala was nabbed he was considered to be a dangerous honcho in the top ranks of the terrorist infrastructure. Back on January 8, 2013, none other than Fox News super-pundit Charles Krauthammer had this to say about Khattala (@5:20 in the video):

“We know the leader of the attack was a certain, Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was seen a few days later in a coffee shop outside Benghazi.”

That was the Fox view a year and a half ago when they were still bashing Obama for not having arrested anyone. So if Khattala is not the Benghazi leader as Krauthammer said, then who was? Well, buried in Housley’s report is the answer. it was one Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu:

“He was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for more than five years and at the time was classified by analysts at the prison as ‘a probable member of Al Qaeda.’ Despite this significant threat to American security and allies, bin Qumu was released as part of an amnesty for militants in 2008.”

Actually, Housley’s facts are a bit muddled. Bin Qumu was released from Gitmo in September of 2007, and handed over to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It was Gaddafi who, in 2008, declared an amnesty and released bin Qumu and other Libyan prisoners. Either way, it was the Bush administration who sent bin Qumu home where he eventually took command of the militia that Fox News now says orchestrated the Benghazi attack and the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

If bin Qumu had been released from Gitmo while Obama was president, you can be sure that Fox News, and a horde of wild-eyed Republicans, would be aghast at such a treasonous breach of judgment and law, and would be calling for his impeachment (again). That is, after all, precisely the way they reacted to the false accounts of Baghdadi’s release. But since bin Qumu gained his freedom thanks to President Bush, Fox will never mention it outside of incidental references like Housley’s, which was probably an oversight.

Shameless self-promotion…
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Reporting like this is a revealing window into the dishonesty that infects virtually everything that Fox News does. In this one story they contradict their previous analyses of Khattala as the ringleader of Benghazi and demote him to foot soldier. At the same time they expose the Bush administration as being responsible for the release of the real Benghazi mastermind, but mention it only in passing and leave it utterly unexamined in any credible manner. And that’s how propaganda is done.

Fox Nation Follies: The “Stupid People Are Ruining America” Edition

Posted by Mark NC on June 22, 2014 at 9:30 am. 13 Comments :

We at News Corpse will risk life and limb to ride the rapids of the ridiculousness that emanates from Fox News, but there are times when the flow is difficult to keep up with. At times like these it may be necessary to compile some of the most significant stories into one article. But rest assured, we will always persevere in order to bring you, our readers, the critical information that you need to get through your busy day. You’re welcome.

First out of the gates is a ripe bit of nonsense from pizza magnate, and former GOP presidential front-runner, Herman Cain. Cain spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference last week. This is an affair produced by Christian Coalition founder, and Jack Abramoff accomplice, Ralph Reed. The competition for “Most Ludicrous Comment” is stiff at this conference that hosted rightist luminaries like Michelle Bachmann, Ted Cruz, and Rick Santorum. It’s the classy sort of gala where one can find Obama figurines in urinals. But it was Cain who came away with the zinger of the week:

“I have even heard people say, ‘Well I don’t vote because I don’t know what’s going on.’ And I say good. Stupid people are ruining American and I’m glad some of them stay home. The solution is real simple folks. Those of us who are informed have got to out-vote the stupid people.”

Exactly! What this nation needs is more people like Herman Cain deciding America’s fate at the polls. After all this is the man whose encyclopedic knowledge of the world gave birth to the state of Uzbeckibekistanstan. And the coverage of Cain’s comedy routine at the conference provided additional examples of the not-stupid by the geniuses at Fox Nation:

The Fox Nationalists also reached out to their ideological allies at Infowars, Alex Jones’ ultra-fringe conspiracy theory website, to find an article that alleged that border agents were resigning en masse over their objections to foreign-born gang members being allowed to freely invade our peaceful, white, Christian neighborhoods. These alleged gangsters were reputed to be coming from the ranks of the immigrant children being housed at federal facilities while awaiting deportation or unification with their families.

The problem with this story is that the local newscast from which it was derived interviewed a border patrol union official who said only that some of his agents were suffering from low morale and were looking for other jobs, but that none had quit. He was also asked how many gang members he estimated were crossing the border. His answer was “A few, not too many,” thereby dispensing with the whole false premise of the article. And the photo in the Fox Nation posting is of gang members in Central America who have nothing to do with the current crisis of minor children immigrating unaccompanied into the U.S.

But what’s really troubling is that the Fox Nationalists saw fit to cite Infowars as the source for their disinformation. And this isn’t the first time. They have previously sourced articles to Infowars with similarly absurd reports. For instance:

Homeland Security to Purchase 141,000 Rounds of Sniper Ammo
Ex-TSA Screener: Officers ‘Laughing’ At Passengers’ Nude Images
DHS Video Characterizes Terrorists as White Americans
TSA Deploys Weiner Watchers at Super Bowl
Anarchists Plan War on Tea Parties April 15th

For more examples of Fox Nation’s lying ways…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Finally, Fox News has shamelessly exploited the terrorist attack in Benghazi for their craven political objectives. In the process, they have tried to cast Hillary Clinton as responsible for the tragedy and uncaring about the consequences. However, it is Fox, and their right-wing cronies, who have sullied the memory of those killed in the service of their country. Fox, and their GOP pals, has even used the deaths as a means of raising money for Republican organizations.

Now another example of that callousness is on display on Fox Nation. Jason Mattera, a blitheringly idiotic wingnut who has carved a reputation out of embarrassing himself by attempting to embarrass others in foolishly contrived ambush videos, makes an appearance in a new video where he approaches Hillary Clinton at a book signing. When Clinton asks for his name, Mattera asks that she make it out to Christopher Stevens, the murdered ambassador who was also a friend of Clinton’s. Clinton refused his crass request and politely dismissed him saying “I think it would be great if you read.” the book. Mattera then made a couple of snarky remarks about Clinton’s security, who quickly ushered him away. However, he did successfully demonstrate how to disparage the memory of fallen patriots in pursuit of self-serving publicity.

And that’s today’s episode of the Fox Nation Follies. We hope you enjoyed the parade of repugnant imbeciles that populate the Fox newsroom. And with any luck, Herman Cain’s vision for America will come to pass and the sort of dimwits who make up the Fox News/Tea Party audience will stay home in November and stop wrecking the country for the rest of us.

Obama Captures Suspect In Benghazi Attack To Distract From Benghazi

Posted by Mark NC on June 17, 2014 at 1:34 pm. 22 Comments :

You might think that today’s news that a suspect in the Benghazi terrorist attack was captured in Libya would be greeted with satisfaction and relief. You would be right with respect to the reaction of the American people, but over at Fox News it’s a different story.

As usual, nothing that Obama does can be characterized positively at Fox News. They work studiously to maintain their warped view that Obama is a foreign-born, anti-American, terrorist-sympathizing, incompetent, evil genius. And so it is with the apprehension of Ansar al-Sharia commander Ahmed Abu Khattala.

Within seconds of the report, Kennedy, co-hosting today on Outnumbered, launched into a paranoid rant infused with suspicion and conspiracy that dismissed the arrest as a political stunt (video below). Following an absurdly presumptive statement by Fox News analyst Pete Hegseth, who asserted that “we all have questions about the timing.” Kennedy offered a thinly veiled swipe at Hillary Clinton:

Kennedy: “You have the former secretary of state, who is in the middle of a really high-profile book tour, and I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points from some of the things that she’s been discussing.”

Hegseth agreed and added that the administration had some sort of motivation to execute this mission today, again slyly referencing Clinton. And for some reason they all seem to be afraid to say her name as if saying it three times might cause her to appear in the studio. (Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetleju…)

Hegseth: “I think this thing needs to be tied in a bow for certain individuals to have a clean break from an incident that has become, and will continue to be a scandal — an anchor around a certain individual’s neck, who may want to run for president.

Kimberly Guilfoyle picked up on the theme and added that “She’s having an interview today on Fox News.” That clinched it for Hegseth who, appearing quite pleased with himself, laid out the reasoning for this dastardly plot:

Hegseth: “What a great thing to announce on an interview tonight at Fox News, that the perpetrators have been brought to justice. It’s all too neat, and it’s too cute.”

Exactly! The impulse to bring to justice someone who was responsible for the deaths of Americans had to be inspired by a desire to create something to talk about in a TV interview. Because otherwise there would have been nothing to talk about except the newly published book that was the whole reason for the interview. Surely Clinton didn’t want that to come up.

It’s ludicrous in the first place to suggest that Obama contrived the timing of this capture to help Clinton. The timing isn’t all that helpful to her being two years before a presidential race for which she hasn’t even announced her candidacy. Then, of course, why wouldn’t he have timed it to help himself when the health care rollout was floundering? Or when the IRS was accused of targeting the Tea Party? Or when the Veterans Administration affair erupted? Let’s face it, no matter when this terrorist was apprehended something else would be going on somewhere in the world that conservative nutcases could claim it was a distraction from. And they would have.

The shockingly obvious determination to turn this good news into an evil scheme is typical of Fox News to the point of being cliche. They have made it their mission to defame this president, and all liberals, from their inception. And the uniformity of thought suggests that they were given orders to present this news in the twisted manner that they did. And the fact that they conspicuously avoided uttering Hillary Clinton’s name even once in the segment, despite making her the single subject of their conversation, it is likely they were forbidden to do so by Roger Ailes or their other handlers.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

This isn’t the first time they have done this sort of thing. They similarly attributed ulterior motives to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, which many wingnuts saw as an attempt to distract from his “fake” birth certificate. And they assigned a half dozen different news events as alleged distractions from the travails of the ObamaCare launch (although now that it’s a success, it is Fox that is playing the distraction game).

So you can bet on it. Before too long somebody is going to accuse Obama of orchestrating the capture of this Benghazi terrorist as an attempt to distract from Benghazi. More times than I can count, these delusional rightists have proven that their reality is funnier, and more far-fetched, than any satire that I can concoct.

[UPDATE:] The New York Times is now reporting that Khattala “was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.” Which means that everything that Obama, Clinton, and Rice (and the whole intelligence community) said in the initial stages of the attack was true. Which means that one of Fox’s most desperate lines of attack is shredded. Whatever will they say now? (Don’t worry. They will ignore this detail and continue to make up whatever they want, just like they always do.)

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